[ILUG] X clipboard weirdness

[Dermot McGahon]

On Sun, 18 Apr 2004 13:50:55 +0100, Timothy Murphy 
<tim at birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie> wrote:

> What _exactly_ is the "normal X selection middle-click"?

PRIMARY X selection as provided for by the X Protocol
Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.

http://www.msu.edu/~huntharo/xwin/docs/xwindows/selection.pdf


> I find click-and-paste to be a complete gamble.
> The so-called standard X method sometimes works,
> but just as often doesn't -
> it depends on the applications in question.

There can be issues. But, sticking to this one method
works in my experience. Mixing between x selections and
clipboard tools can cause problems for well documented
reasons. And there are buggy clients, who don't implement
the spec properly.

When this happens next, you could experiment to find out
what is going on with this:

http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~vherva/xsel/

Could be a nice way to find out more about X.

If it's a buggy client, it should ideally be fixed.

> The only thing I find absolutely certain to work (using KDE)
> is to highlight the text with the mouse,
> then go to the clipboard and click on the chosen text.
> Then it will paste anywhere without problem.

But this is of no use to you in an non-kde environment,
whereas using the primary X selection works in all X
environments for all non-buggy clients. That's the reason
that I try and use the standard method.


> [I'm actually using KDE-3.2.1 under Fedora-1,
> but I don't think that is relevant.]

Well, it's relevant in that you are only interested in a
cut-and-paste mechanism for kde. But no, you're right,
there can be issues and not only in kde.

Go with what works for you. What I am saying is that for me
at least, primary X selection works just fine. On the rare
occasions that it doesn't ctrl-x, ctrl-c in kde/gnome is a
nice alternative to have.


Dermot.
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